May 19, 2022·edited May 20, 2022Liked by John Ganz
`Today's "Sesame Street" is brought to you by the fraction "1‰" and the word "mystification".'
Just as it was easy for right-wingers who 'knew' that Barack Obama _couldn't_ be qualified to be President to support Trump even if they understood he wasn't qualified, it's easy for those who 'know' that The Colored were never _really_ victims to say that they themselves are, whether they really believe it or not—`It's only fair!ʼ. (My guess: the stupider or [more charitably] less worldly Owners believe it, the smarter or more worldly ones know it's a lie but salve their consciences with the notion that 'victims' were a null or even should-be-despised class whose assignment-into were just part of the game, the one played for lives and for keeps. See: Sudeten Germans, Danzig Germans, Russian Ukrainians.)
More evidence for your thesis comes from the extensive reporting that Trump was never accepted by the NYC cultural/artistic elite, and was always resentful of this.
(As well as Nixon's earlier quarrels with the "Franklins" at Whittier.)
And, of course, much more. It doesn't take a coked-up leftist fulminating about James Jesus Angleton to see something here. But then again, apparently not for Andreessen, who would...trade it all for respect?
Then again, the level of faddishness can't be underestimated; he was also enthusing previously how "Lindy" helps guide his investment decisions. That's ultimately the point: Andreessen, like most of the buccaneering capitalist class, would like to indulge in all his enthusiasms without interference from pettifogging PMC, skeptical press, unions, etc.
Some intrepid soul should try to tackle the historical evolution of economic power holders’s changing preoccupation with cultural capital.
For much of industrial capitalism’s history, the “cultural enemy” was the same as the economic and political enemy - workers’s control movements, large unions and the threat of the general strike.
With the destruction of the threat of organized labor in the 1960s and 70s, and the parallel rise of the “personal is political” movement (politicizing issues like gender, race, reproductive rights, etc. for the first time as a mass movement) the “cultural enemy” was severed off from the class-based politics of the workers’s movement (at least in the minds of those who felt threatened by the new movements).
The economic and political “enemy” having been largely defanged by the dismantling of the labor movement, the sources of economic power now turned their attention to new threats that, for the first time, seemed decoupled from class-based politics - the control over personal identity and less-overtly class-based power struggles. Crushing workers used to be enough to also crush “cultural” threats (alternative ideas of solidarity and social association). Turns out that it just created a new battlefield.
Like everything, there is a material history underpinning the obsessions of the economically powerful with cultural capital, involving shifting sources of power, and your piece kind of made me wonder if anyone had tried to investigate this specific history in detail. Anyway, lots of food for thought, as always, in your piece.
Do you remember if Burnham, in his early anti-Marxist days when he was at his sharpest, had Hochman's focus on 'identity' and 'identity-production' ? If not, then it might be viable to explore the Burnham-curious theories of class, from the insane racialist version in Sam Francis to Mills' Power Elite and Domhoff's running psuedo-survey, with the eye towards the following: the numerically larger the purported ruling class, the more cultural factors grow in importance to the analysis. Domhoff thinks the 'real' ruling class is about half a million people and he has been able to deal with the reality of cultural pluralism quite well, whereas Francis, in Leviathan and Its Enemies at least, more or less makes somewhere between a quarter and a sixth of the adult population an 'elite' and can't deal with the de-WASP-ification of America's white populace, to say nothing to having a reasonable way of dealing with identity politics.
The odd thing is that conservative alienation from metropolitan culture, the academy, etc, is to such a large degree self-imposed. Conservatives just don’t apply to PhD programs in sociology or work their way through unpaid journalism internships in metropolitan centers - this would indicate that they do actually care about material power more than cultural capital, but that admitting this is bad politics if you need to cobble together an electoral coalition and not just administer unadulterated bourgeois rule.
I've thinking about the _petit bourgeoisie_ as class since some of Jeet Heer's work talking about it earlier (likely pieces that referenced you!) and I'm still blown away bow how *rock solid* and *consistent* this classes support for revanchist, anti-democratic, 'strong man' type leaders (and forces) going back to at least Napoleon.
Other classes don't seem to work like this. Workers, historically, more often than not find themselves split along ethnic lines. Or if not that, than between different industries or trades. And some working class people will be recruited to be cops, or serve whatever policing function.
The elites, the rich, the upper class, often also find themselves divided, perhaps battling over resources, but also importantly between oligarchic tendancies, and those who have a more aristocratic _noblesse oblige_ ideology.
But across all those periods, I would *bet* if you looked at say: landlords, 'small'/family business owners and the like, one would find a consistent political expression.
`Today's "Sesame Street" is brought to you by the fraction "1‰" and the word "mystification".'
Just as it was easy for right-wingers who 'knew' that Barack Obama _couldn't_ be qualified to be President to support Trump even if they understood he wasn't qualified, it's easy for those who 'know' that The Colored were never _really_ victims to say that they themselves are, whether they really believe it or not—`It's only fair!ʼ. (My guess: the stupider or [more charitably] less worldly Owners believe it, the smarter or more worldly ones know it's a lie but salve their consciences with the notion that 'victims' were a null or even should-be-despised class whose assignment-into were just part of the game, the one played for lives and for keeps. See: Sudeten Germans, Danzig Germans, Russian Ukrainians.)
Thanks!
More evidence for your thesis comes from the extensive reporting that Trump was never accepted by the NYC cultural/artistic elite, and was always resentful of this.
(As well as Nixon's earlier quarrels with the "Franklins" at Whittier.)
Andreessen, of course, is the most piquant and hilarious example of the divorce between real power and hurt feelings here.
Here's Marc advising the current Department of Homeland Security: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2022/03/17/secretary-mayorkas-announces-new-homeland-security-advisory-council-members
Andreessen was a frequent dinner guest of Mike Pompeo during his CIA days: https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house.gov/files/2020-06-16.SFL%20to%20Haspel-CIA%20re%20Pompeo%20Advisory%20Board%20Activities.pdf
And, of course, much more. It doesn't take a coked-up leftist fulminating about James Jesus Angleton to see something here. But then again, apparently not for Andreessen, who would...trade it all for respect?
Then again, the level of faddishness can't be underestimated; he was also enthusing previously how "Lindy" helps guide his investment decisions. That's ultimately the point: Andreessen, like most of the buccaneering capitalist class, would like to indulge in all his enthusiasms without interference from pettifogging PMC, skeptical press, unions, etc.
Some intrepid soul should try to tackle the historical evolution of economic power holders’s changing preoccupation with cultural capital.
For much of industrial capitalism’s history, the “cultural enemy” was the same as the economic and political enemy - workers’s control movements, large unions and the threat of the general strike.
With the destruction of the threat of organized labor in the 1960s and 70s, and the parallel rise of the “personal is political” movement (politicizing issues like gender, race, reproductive rights, etc. for the first time as a mass movement) the “cultural enemy” was severed off from the class-based politics of the workers’s movement (at least in the minds of those who felt threatened by the new movements).
The economic and political “enemy” having been largely defanged by the dismantling of the labor movement, the sources of economic power now turned their attention to new threats that, for the first time, seemed decoupled from class-based politics - the control over personal identity and less-overtly class-based power struggles. Crushing workers used to be enough to also crush “cultural” threats (alternative ideas of solidarity and social association). Turns out that it just created a new battlefield.
Like everything, there is a material history underpinning the obsessions of the economically powerful with cultural capital, involving shifting sources of power, and your piece kind of made me wonder if anyone had tried to investigate this specific history in detail. Anyway, lots of food for thought, as always, in your piece.
Do you remember if Burnham, in his early anti-Marxist days when he was at his sharpest, had Hochman's focus on 'identity' and 'identity-production' ? If not, then it might be viable to explore the Burnham-curious theories of class, from the insane racialist version in Sam Francis to Mills' Power Elite and Domhoff's running psuedo-survey, with the eye towards the following: the numerically larger the purported ruling class, the more cultural factors grow in importance to the analysis. Domhoff thinks the 'real' ruling class is about half a million people and he has been able to deal with the reality of cultural pluralism quite well, whereas Francis, in Leviathan and Its Enemies at least, more or less makes somewhere between a quarter and a sixth of the adult population an 'elite' and can't deal with the de-WASP-ification of America's white populace, to say nothing to having a reasonable way of dealing with identity politics.
The odd thing is that conservative alienation from metropolitan culture, the academy, etc, is to such a large degree self-imposed. Conservatives just don’t apply to PhD programs in sociology or work their way through unpaid journalism internships in metropolitan centers - this would indicate that they do actually care about material power more than cultural capital, but that admitting this is bad politics if you need to cobble together an electoral coalition and not just administer unadulterated bourgeois rule.
I've thinking about the _petit bourgeoisie_ as class since some of Jeet Heer's work talking about it earlier (likely pieces that referenced you!) and I'm still blown away bow how *rock solid* and *consistent* this classes support for revanchist, anti-democratic, 'strong man' type leaders (and forces) going back to at least Napoleon.
Other classes don't seem to work like this. Workers, historically, more often than not find themselves split along ethnic lines. Or if not that, than between different industries or trades. And some working class people will be recruited to be cops, or serve whatever policing function.
The elites, the rich, the upper class, often also find themselves divided, perhaps battling over resources, but also importantly between oligarchic tendancies, and those who have a more aristocratic _noblesse oblige_ ideology.
But across all those periods, I would *bet* if you looked at say: landlords, 'small'/family business owners and the like, one would find a consistent political expression.